


Thanatophobia

by LittleMissLiesmith



Category: Don't Starve (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, I'm not sure what this is, Introspection, i wrote this instead of working, mentions of just about everyone else - Freeform, or if it makes sense, the idea was in my head and it would not go away, whatever
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-11
Updated: 2017-01-11
Packaged: 2018-09-16 22:18:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,339
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9291902
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleMissLiesmith/pseuds/LittleMissLiesmith
Summary: First off; if Abigail had been a reward, Wendy would have paid any price. But she did not have to. Abigail was around before Wendy left, and Wendy was not stolen away anywhere.She stares at the flower in her hands. Abigail hovers at her shoulder.“You can never tell them,” she murmurs in Wendy’s ear. “You can’t. They’ll make you leave.”Wendy was not stolen away anywhere. She chose to come.





	

**Author's Note:**

> *looks at multiple WIPs* *looks at WIPs that are for Don't Starve for goodness sakes* *writes this anyway*
> 
> ...I'll probably get back to the WIPs soon. Promise.

They tell their stories late at night around the fire, and that is when Wendy knows she can never tell them.

 

She knows they have their assumptions, but now she can guess exactly what they think. She traded her life away for Abigail, was promised that she could have her back. She listens as they go around, telling stories of something wanted more than breathing, something they were willing to do anything for, something they got and wished they never had.

 

First off; if Abigail _had_ been a reward, Wendy would have paid any price. But she did not have to. Abigail was around before Wendy left, and Wendy was not stolen away anywhere.

 

They feel sorry for her, she thinks. Her and Webber, two children in an unforgiving world. She has her suspicions about Webber, thinks his story might be different too. The two of them are the only ones not to tell their story that night. Wendy shakes her head and looks at the ground, properly worried and upset, and the adults all coo and fuss and move on to Wolfgang on her right.

 

She stares at the flower in her hands. Abigail hovers at her shoulder.

 

“You can never tell them,” she murmurs in Wendy’s ear. The others can’t hear her. They can see her, usually, but they cannot hear the things she whispers. “You can’t. They’ll make you leave.”

 

Wendy nods. She knows all of this already.

 

Wendy was not stolen away anywhere. She chose to come.

 

-M-

 

Wendy remembered her Uncle William from the one time he visited. The tall, thin man in the neat suit and his friend with the dark hair. Her father had hugged him and expressed disbelief—apparently he thought him dead, and that a letter that hung on the wall was perhaps a hoax. It was a glad day. He brought her and Abigail gifts, little trinkets from New York, and he told them stories of a land he had begun to visit. A land where anything was possible, where you could become a king or a queen or whatever you wanted, shape the world to your whim, have servants made of shadows and live in peace, forever. Anything you wanted at all.

 

He left and promised to come back after his final show in the city.

 

Two weeks later Wendy awoke in an earthquake. She and Abigail stumbled through the house, holding hands, trying to get out, trying to find somewhere that would be safe from the city tumbling around them.

 

Wendy was safe.

 

Her uncle never returned. They held a funeral for Abigail first, and then a funeral for him, without a body. Her father did not stop crying for three weeks. The loss of his daughter, the second loss of his brother. Her mother threw herself in the river two weeks in, and Wendy and her father were alone in the world.

 

Wendy held tight to a flower that never wilted, Abigail’s favorite kind. They had picked them from the backyard the day before the earthquake, Abigail telling her how much Uncle Will would like them, because he had red flowers too, and even though those were roses and these were camellias he’d be sure to appreciate them when he came to visit. They had dumped the flowers onto their dresser and made plans to get him to tell them more stories.

 

Abigail didn’t leave. She showed up for the first time at the funeral, when Wendy stepped on a spider that was crawling too close. Wendy looked at her, sure she was crazy, and Abigail smiled and held a finger to her lips and followed her home. That night, she told Wendy she hadn’t left; she’d been staying there. The spider had given her enough life to take for her own to appear to her sister.

 

Wendy was no longer alone.

 

She remembered, though, the stories her uncle told. The stories about a world beyond theirs. At night she dreamed of shadows; she found a letter on the table that said that all that had been recovered of her uncle and his pretty friend were a red rose and some strange black goop that could not be explained. Whisperings of witchcraft followed Wendy, tiny threads of _it runs in the family, you know_.

 

Wendy made a plan.

 

With Abigail’s help, she found out all that she could about her uncle’s show and dealings. She gathered everything connected to it that she could find, stole the flower from her father’s desk, and piled it all in her room. She drew out the symbols that had been sketched by people who had seen the show. She turned her room into a world of its own.

 

She wasn’t sure what to do now, so she placed Abigail’s flower in the center. Abigail had gotten tired and left halfway through. She went outside and found a rat, squirming in the gutter, and took it up to her room and snapped its neck.

 

The world went black and white. Abigail floated out of her flower and things began to circle around them. Wendy was not dizzy.

 

Hands came out of the ground, questing and tapping at Wendy. Wendy nodded and held out her own hand, and followed them into the dark, Abigail’s flower in her hair.

 

-M-

 

She wasn’t sure if Maxwell was her uncle. She thought probably, based on the descriptions of him Wilson gave. But it was possible that it was just a resemblance, and her uncle had never become king, and he was still out there, giving up, dying over and over again.

 

Wendy made it for almost two years once. She celebrated her thirteenth birthday, started to get small red dots on her face, was developing. Then she was killed by one of the monsters and woke up and was eleven again.

 

She had come to find her uncle, and his strange world of magic and monsters. She had come to see if he was king yet, and if he was, would he let her be a princess, her and Abigail. The others here saw Abigail; surely seeing a ghost girl would allow her to be a princess too. She had come, if he was not king, to make herself queen.

 

“We have to leave soon,” said Abigail quietly to her as the others slept. “You have to keep moving. They’ll find out eventually.”

 

Wendy didn’t want to, except that she did. She wanted to carry on her mission, but she also wanted to stay with this strange little family she had found. She wanted to find her uncle but she wanted to stay.

 

Two nights later, she packed up a bag. Abigail lit the way in the dark, Wendy not daring to have a torch for fear that the others might see. She set off, looking for something Wilson had once told them about; a strange door to deeper worlds. He had gone through it but had died after moving through three world, Maxwell appearing in each one; he had found them shortly after and hadn’t tried again.

 

Wendy stood in front of the door with Abigail by her side. It was just a door. You could see around behind it. That was a door, too. It led nowhere.

 

She pushed it open and stepped inside.

 

-M-

 

Wendy’s uncle had told her of a strange world of magic and monsters, a world where kings and queens reigned and could do anything.

 

Wendy came to find her uncle and Wendy came to be the queen.

 

She _would_ be the queen, at least. Even if what she might find was not her uncle—one way or another, Wendy would find the end of the board and Wendy would be royalty.

 

She told herself she was not stolen away. But deep under the world, in the darkness of level after level, she sometimes wondered if she had been. If her promise had not been Abigail, but rule.

 

Well, it hardly seemed fair that everyone else got their wishes.

 

**Author's Note:**

> The idea would not leave that Wendy hadn't made a deal but went in search of her uncle. It didn't turn out how I pictured but I think it's okay anyway.
> 
> Also, triumphant!Wendy.
> 
> The absolutely incredible art is by [Kaaramel.](http://kaaramel.tumblr.com) I have yet to stop screaming.


End file.
